Page:Memoirs of Henry Villard, volume 2.djvu/208

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HENRY VILLARD
[1863

mauga. It must be said that they did not receive any too much sympathy from the officers and men of their commands. I felt sincerely for them, knowing them always to have tried to perform their duties to the best of their ability. I had been one of McCook's military family so often, and received so much kindness from all its members, that their departure moved me like a great personal loss. Their separation from the Army of the Cumberland was permanent, although they both underwent courts of inquiry into their conduct at Chickamauga, which found that General McCook committed a mistake in leaving the field to go to Chattanooga, but that this was only an error of judgment, and that in all respects his behavior was faultless, and which pronounced that “General Crittenden's conduct not only showed no cause for censure, but that it was most creditable, and that he was not even censurable for going to Chattanooga.” I did not see General McCook again before the close of the war, but I found General Crittenden once more in active service six months later, at the head of a division in the Army of the Potomac. Both issued pathetic farewell orders to their corps.

On the same day, the reorganization of the army, necessitated by the formation of a new corps out of the 20th and 21st, was formally promulgated by general order. The 4th Corps was to consist of three divisions commanded respectively by Generals Palmer, Sheridan, and Wood. Each division comprised three brigades, commanded in the first by Colonel Cruft, General Whitaker, and Colonel Grose; in the second by Generals Steedman and Wagner and Colonel Harker; and in the third by Generals Willich, Hazen, and Beatty. The divisions averaged be tween 6000 and 7000 men, and the total strength of the corps was nearly 20,000. The 14th Corps also constituted three divisions, instead of the former four, under Generals Rousseau (who resumed command on return from leave, relieving General Brannan), Baird, and Davis, and each division consisted of three brigades — in the first under